CS448 Assignment 1

Handed Out: Tuesday, Oct 5 Due: Wednesday, Oct 13

Your first assignment is to describe a future interactive workplace. The goal is to integrate ideas from class and your own experiences, and to force you to look around at the places you work and play for possibilities.

The paper should contain several sections:

  1. A short description of the physical space and the activities within the space. This should include the layout, and the ways people place themselves and move in the space while doing the work.
  2. Describe the embedded computing and interactive components (input and output devices) within the space. Include non-computer objects that are relevant to the work (e.g., paper-based information that is brought into the space, physical models of things being designed, etc.).
  3. Give a short scenario of people using an application that you imagine in the space. Describe what they are trying to do and which devices and objects they interact with, in a screenplay like step by step description.
For this assignment, you can focus on a room or part of the building, or describe a new type of built-in device like a wall or table display.

The goal of the writeup to generate imaginative ideas that might latter serve as catalysts for course projects. Make sure your motivate your example. Don't worry too much about the details of the implementation, but don't be so futuristic that you can't even imagine how it could be built (this excludes holodecks, for example). Since we want to generate a lot of ideas, this assignment should be done individually, although feel free to discuss your ideas with others in the class.

The final paper should be short (say roughly 3-4 pages). Include a few pictures and/or sketches that convey your idea. Translate your paper to html and make it available from your web page. To hand it in, send the url to cs448a@graphics.stanford.edu. Note that we will be assembling a web page with pointers to all the papers so that others in the class can read the scenarios that have been proposed.